Ostheimer Wooden Toys

We love what we do!

We are a community of people who make wooden figures for children with diligence and a lot of heart. At Ostheimer, we have made toys in the same way for over 60 years - step by step in pure handcraft. We are guided by the vision of our company founders to produce simple yet beautifully designed wooden toys for children that convey an endearing, dignified image of people, animals and plants.

In accordance with our mission statement, we strive to manage our company with wider awareness and a holistic understanding of responsibility. This concerns the design of our toys, the quality of our products, the appreciative and careful handling of our materials and the social ethos within our company as well as towards our business partners.

Our company is owned by the non-profit Walter and Adeline Ostheimer Foundation, which ensures that our company will remain true to its guiding principles in the future and encourages us not to work toward profit maximization, but rather to keep our focus on ensuring the financial health of our company and supporting the common good.

Margarete Ostheimer GmbH

Our Company

Our company, the Margarete Ostheimer GmbH, is foundation-owned and has around 70 permanent employees in Zell unter Aichelberg, Germany. These include 5 integrative jobs for people with support needs.

In addition, we employ about 80 home workers in the region, who are mainly engaged in figure painting, but also in woodworking. Only thanks to all these different people are we able to offer our large assortment of figures.

External Production Partners

For decades, 5 independent family businesses in Poland have produced the range of Konrad Keller products and the former Kinderkram products. Here, too, manufacturing is done exclusively by hand. When Ostheimer took over Kinderkram in 2003, it was decided to keep manufacturing in Poland to preserve these family companies.

We also have a longstanding partnership with a sawmill in Hungary, with a manufacturer in Thuringia, and with a very high-quality wood crafting workshop in Bosnia. Our castle parts, our grasping toys, and various buildings are manufactured in Bosnia.

Every one of our product labels indicates the country where the respective product was manufactured. This gives our customers the greatest possible transparency.

Distribution
Ostheimer products are sold in specialized toy stores, arts and crafts stores, kindergarten suppliers, as well as mail-order and online retailers in Germany, Europe and around the world.
In nearly all European countries, our customers are served by independent sales representatives. In the United States of America, Japan, South Korea and Australia we cooperate with retail agencies, some of which supply the local market with their own warehouses. Our export share is just below 30 %.

History of the company 

From a tiny family business to a stately company

Ostheimer Wooden Toys can look back on more than 80 years of company history. From a tiny family business, in which toys were designed and manufactured on a part-time basis, a large, modern company has grown over the decades with the world-famous wooden figures. You can find an overview of the eventful development with its ups and downs  here.